From my Notebooks

Y. Tzvi Langermann From my Notebooks An Early Modern Cosmography from Northern Italy MS Moscow Guenzburg 337 (IMHM F 47706), ff. 114a-146b, contains the unique copy of an early modern treatise on cosmography. The author refers to his work several times as kadur colam (the sphere of the world). However, this appears to be the name of the genre to which the treatise belongs, i.e., sphaera mundi, rather than a title given specifically to this work. At its end (f. 146b), our author apologizes for giving only a general presentation and leaving out many technical details, since that is what is appropriate for a book on kadur colam. He adds that he will discuss the heavenly bodies in much greater detail in a book on the planetary motions (mahalak kokavim nevukim) that he hopes to write. The latter, too, seems to be a generic rather than a specific title; no copies of a work of this sort by our author are known to exist. The author's name is not given, but his town is: "Cavoro," that is Cavour, near Turin in northern Italy (f. 139a). At f. 145a, he refers to the level terrain "in the valleys close to Lombardy"; these would be in the vicinity of his hometown. A postscript in the same hand records the sighting of a comet in 1577; thus the treatise was written in that year or shortly before. Numerous revisions indicate that this manuscript copy is an autograph. The style is at times a bit difficult and some words are unclear or employed in an unusual fashion. This makes some passages Aleph 2 (2002)279 difficult to translate and I have had to paraphrase them as best as I can. Nevertheless, the arguments are clear enough. The bulk of the treatise is an exposition of medieval astronomy. Ptolemy and al-Farghânï are the most frequently cited authorities; Aristotle's De caelo is often mentioned, too. In the Middle Ages, the Almagest and its derivatives on the one hand, and De caelo and its commentaries on the other, constituted two distinct textual traditions. Their combination in our treatise may, then, represent some consolidation of sources, though this has no significant impact on its doctrines.1 At several points, however, our author evinces interest in the new knowledge of his era and carries the discussion in directions unheard of in medieval texts. Of these, the most important concerns new information about geography. As we shall see presently, however, our author is not challenged by the new facts, but rather by the very idea that his generation has acquired knowledge of things unknown to the ancients. In particular, he finds that the phenomenon of the growth of knowledge raises doubts concerning the doctrine of the eternity of the word—anathema, to be sure, to most medieval Jewish savants, but apparently regarded by our author as a secure truth. We shall shortly examine this part of the treatise in detail. First, however, I would like to offer one general observation. It seems to me that our author's dwelling on one feature of what historians have come to call the "new science," in the midst of a rather staid exposition of the old science, is typical of many early modern treatises. Although the bulk of their teachings often consists of medieval or classical science, in the course of their exposition they address some aspects of the new science that, for whatever reason, caught their imagination. This is the case with Tekunat ha-hawayah or Rafael Hanover's Tekunat ha-samayim. Both of these are astronomical treaties written in the eighteenth century; both teach Ptolemaic astronomy. However, the former is enthusiastic about new theories in magnetism, and the latter adds, in the final chapter, a sympathetic account of the Copernican theory.2 280 Y. Tzvi Langermann Classical geographers had divided the earth into seven climates or bands defined by parallels of latitude. In keeping with their knowledge of the inhabited parts of the earth, these climates covered approximately one-quarter of the earth's surface, that is, the northern hemisphere from the Atlantic to China. Hellenistic authorities had disagreed as to whether or not there...